Seòmar agus comataidhean

I know that we are slightly short for time, but in relation to drugs in prisons, I heard a candid account last week from a prison officer at Saughton prison. He said that most of the drugs come into the prison smuggled in paper letters or items of clothing that are then dissolved into a solution and turned into dangerous psychoactive substances. During the Covid lockdown, letters were being stopped and photocopied to prevent the spread of Covid and the prison had a dramatic reduction in the number of cases of prisoners under the influence of drugs. As soon as those restrictions ended and the letters continued on their merry way into the prison, there was a huge and immediate increase in drug use. On one day, seven ambulances were called to Saughton prison.

Keith Brown talked about radical ideas. This might sound simplistic, but if that is the case in prisons, could it not be looked at as a matter of urgency to reinstate as a matter of routine letters—other than legally privileged letters—being photocopied, rather than handing over the originals?

I am not entirely sure if I need to declare an interest, but I will do so to err on the side caution: I am married to a serving police officer.

There are so many questions but not nearly enough time, so I will try to focus my questions. The first issue is the effects of Covid on the courts and justice system. Some very creative work is being done to ease the backlog, which we saw first hand last week. What has perhaps been overlooked is the decision to write off large numbers of hours of community service that had been imposed by the courts. Last week, 262,000 hours was discovered to have been in effect written off. To put that in context, if my calculations are correct, that is more hours than 129 MSPs working full-time for a year would work. It should be noted that those are often serious violent offenders and that such sentences are being used increasingly due to the presumption against shorter sentences of 12 months or less. Is there not a risk that politicians taking such big decisions on sentencing risks undermining the independence of the judicial process and sentencing?

Right—okay.

My second question is about the victims who saw perpetrators—their attackers or whatever it may be—sentenced to community service and who, I presume, felt some sense of relief and justice about that. Was notification given to any victims about the decision in respect of their cases?

In response to Pauline McNeill, you talked about organised crime and the problems that it presents for the Scottish Prison Service. When we visited Saughton, we heard some first-hand accounts of that. It was explained to me that, such is the extent of the organised crime population in prisons—it numbers around 600 people—the risk of extreme violence, which is often gratuitous, is significantly higher than it used to be, and the Prison Service has extreme difficulty in managing that. One senior officer told me that two prisons have in effect become home to groups of prisoners associated with two sides of a fairly prominent and long-running dispute. One of those prisons, Addiewell, has been subject to significant media interest in the past week or two in relation to the power that prisoners appear to have in their relationships with prison staff, and issues of contraband goods in the prison. From a whistleblower talking to the media, there is a sense that Addiewell has serious problems because of the control of organised crime within the prison. Do you recognise that picture of the prison? What, if anything, have you done in response to those media reports?

I will touch quickly on one more subject. Statistics show that take-up of the voluntary victim notification scheme has gone down year on year. Why is that the case? I declare an interest in that I have joined up to the scheme, so I am familiar with its work.

So violent offences were not excluded but domestic violence was excluded.

Are you aware, or was your predecessor aware, of the decision to effectively use prisons as stand-alone places to put particular groups?

As a journalist, I reported extensively on policing and organised crime. I am also married to a police officer.

Thank you.